Daily Archives: December 3, 2014
Trey Gowdy DESTROYS Marielena Hincapie At Immigration Executive Action Hearing
Hat Tip: BB
Obama Has The Power To Grant Amnesty, Says Obama’s ICE Nominee
Jeb Bush Not Opposed To The Substance Of Obama’s Executive Action On Immigration
African-American Voters Lack Clout In Obama White House
GOP Reps Tom Price and Ted Yoho Are “Grubering” Voters on Amnesty
Obama’s Nominee to Direct ICE Supports Exec Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants
TREY GOWDY: Obama is wrong on immigration but Congress shouldn’t take the bait
Don’t be Grubered by Boehner’s Amnesty Plan
Watch Jason Chaffetz Completely Pwn DHS Over Failure to Deport Terrorists
Open Letter to Republicans in Washington
The coming train wreck of Republican surrender
Rush Limbaugh Shocked by Romney Amnesty Embrace
Conservatives Push Short-Term Funding to Block Obama on Illegal Immigrants
Watcher’s Council Nominations – Post Thanksgiving Edition
This particular turkey isn’t quite cooked yet, but the heat’s turned up and we’re working on it.
(Graphic courtesy of IOwnTheWorld)
Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.
Council News:
This week, Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion, IOwnTheWorld, The Pirate’s Cove and Seraphic Secret earned honorable mention status with some great articles.
You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.
To bring something to my attention, simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title and a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address (mandatory, but of course it won’t be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6 PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out on Wednesday morning.
Simple, no?
It’s a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members, while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?
So, let’s see what we have for you this week…
Council Submissions
- The Noisy Room – The New Axis of Evil Waging Unconventional Warfare
- The Independent Sentinel – Obama Feels ‘Incredibly Strongly’ About Illegal Aliens Getting Obamacare
- Simply Jews – Assisting Lisa Goldman in her balancing act
- The Right Planet – #Ferguson: If You Like Your Facts, You Can Keep Your Facts
- Rhymes With Right – Some Thoughts On Ferguson
- VA Right! – Article V Convention – Solution or Pandora’s Box?
- Nice Deb – Megyn Kelly Asks Judge Napolitano: ‘Does Obama Have an Adult Relationship with the Truth?’
- Joshuapundit – The Rams ‘Hands Up’ Protest Doesn’t Bother Me… But Congress’s Is Obscene
- GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – World Police
- The Glittering Eye – Farewell To Jenny’s Car
- The Razor – So Where’s The Inflation?
- Bookworm Room – Bringing common sense to climate science (and life)
Honorable Mentions
- David Gerstman/Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion – How The Media Aids Hamas
- IOwnTheWorld – Why Was Wilson Not Indicted? Because the Grand Jury Dismissed Incoherent, Nearly Retarded Testimony
- The Pirate’s Cove – NY Times: Know What’s Awesome? Hydrogen Cars
- Seraphic Secret – The Ferguson/Palestinian Narrative
Non-Council Submissions
- Sultan Knish – Being Thankful For The Left submitted by The Noisy Room
- Kevin D. Williamson/NRO – Who Boycotts WalMart? submitted by The Independent Sentinel
- Fred Maroun/Times Of Israel – If I Were Israeli… submitted by Simply Jews
- Rebel Pundit – The Ferguson Disaster: The Wreckage of Obama & Marx submitted by The Right Planet
- Right On The Left Coast – Obama: “Teachers Suck” submitted by Rhymes with Right
- Daily Caller – Eric Cantor’s Son Is A Member Of The UVA Fraternity Accused Of Gang Rape submitted by VA Right!
- Don Surber – Do Not Rebuild In Ferguson submitted by Nice Deb
- American Digest – Presence of Malice: Against the Conservative Portrait of the President submitted by Joshuapundit
- Joseph Sarkisian/Cicero Magazine – American Grand Strategy or Grand Illusion? submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
- Matti Friedman/The Atlantic – What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel submitted by The Glittering Eye
- Reason – Whatever Happened To Inflation? submitted by The Razor
- Robert Avrech/Jewish Action – Warning: Hollywood’s Coming for Your Home and Children submitted by Bookworm Room
- Benjamin Weingarten/The Blaze – 10 major takeaways from the House Benghazi report that the media is completely ignoring submitted by The Watcher (h/t, The Noisy Room)
- Thomas Lifeson/American Thinker – The Left’s War On Civil Society’ submitted by The Watcher
Enjoy! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter… ’cause we’re cool like that! And don’t forget to tune in Friday for the results!
Media Have Dirty Hands from Ferguson
By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media
Looking back on the death and destruction in Ferguson, we can see the dirty hands of the media, especially CNN, now basking in the glow of (relatively) high ratings. Racial violence is a ratings booster and winner.
It is certainly correct to say, as the media have said millions of times, that a white police officer shot an unarmed black teenager to death in Ferguson. But this was never the whole truth, and the media knew it. After all, the Trayvon Martin case had proven that the idea of innocent black teenagers being killed for no reason didn’t stand up to scrutiny. In that case, like that of Michael Brown, we discovered the case involved a marijuana-abusing young thug with criminal activity in his background. Martin and Brown turned out to be the aggressors, a fact that comports with statistics on racial violence in America that few in the media want to talk about.
Colin Flaherty writes about it in his book, White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It.
The media’s addition of the terms “white” and “black” in the Michael Brown case reflected the prevailing liberal media bias, in the sense that it was assumed that a racial component was at work and that whites were at fault. The white police officer was presumed guilty. The black teenager was presumed innocent.
In the Trayvon Martin case, it involved a black teenager and a “white Hispanic.”
Now that the grand jury has released the facts of the Michael Brown case, we can see that Officer Darren Wilson was completely justified in his actions. Yet Wilson has left the police force as a result of death threats against him and fellow officers. He has been punished for doing his job.
There is no outrage in the media over that. Instead, on Tuesday, CNN tried to inflame racial passions once again by suggesting that it would be a miscarriage of justice for Michael Brown’s stepfather to be charged with incitement to riot. He had yelled “Burn this bitch down” to demonstrators in Ferguson.
The stepfather, Louis Head, is black. But it appears that most of the violence has been organized by communist groups led by whites. They view blacks as cannon fodder for the revolution. Again, however, the media have shown no interest in this issue.
Not content with a dead, black teenager, the media-mob alliance has forced a respected police officer who dealt with Michael Brown by the book to ultimately leave the city. From this point on, like somebody in the witness protection program, Wilson will have to conceal his identity in order to protect himself and members of his family.
If these members of our media had a conscience, then they would go back and try to correct, even at this late date, all of their misleading coverage, in an effort to restore some level of sanity to the narrative about what happened. But don’t count on it.
The media “mistakes,” to put it charitably, can be easily documented.
Almost immediately after Brown’s death, we were treated to the slogan, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” based on what happened, according to Brown’s best friend, Dorian Johnson. Wolf Blitzer described him as an “eyewitness” and gave him an opportunity to spew what we now know were lies. Johnson, who was present when Brown robbed a convenience store, seems to have originated the misleading “Hands up, don’t shoot” narrative, falsely insisting that Brown was shot in the back. However, the forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony show that Michael Brown was the aggressor and tried to grab Wilson’s gun.
Even before the grand jury report was in, we were treated to outrage over the local police releasing video of Brown robbing the convenience store of swisher sweet cigars. Only later would we learn the cigars were used to assemble high-powered marijuana “blunts.”
On Sunday, when black members of the St. Louis Rams showed up in a display of “Hands up, don’t shoot” at a football game, the St. Louis Police Officers Association naturally took exception. They noted that the display has become “synonymous with assertions that Michael Brown was innocent of any wrongdoing and attempting to surrender peacefully when Wilson, according to some now-discredited witnesses, gunned him down in cold blood.”
The only additional comment that has to be made is that the false narrative originated with “witnesses” procured by the media—who turned out to be liars.
This is why the media have now changed the meaning of “Hands up, don’t shoot” to refer to a “gesture of solidarity” with the protesters. They have made this change without acknowledging that its original meaning has been proven false.
The coverage took another unusual turn during the riots when CNN’s Don Lemon came under fire for noting the use of marijuana by violent protesters. Lemon, who is black, apparently did not realize that by doing that, he was drawing attention to the criminal element in Ferguson. Such an observation reminded some people of Michael Brown’s use of marijuana and theft of cigarillos that are used to make the marijuana “blunts.”
Ferguson did demonstrate the existence of a black criminal element running rampant through the streets and high on drugs. Our media have done their best to whitewash the nature of this domestic threat in order to perpetuate a false narrative of white racist police violence.
We might think that the media would be interested in answering the lingering question during the most recent riots of why the police and the National Guard let various businesses burn down. But the problem is even far worse than the media have let on.
Colin Flaherty, author of White Girl Bleed a Lot, has produced a YouTube video of recordings from a police scanner in Ferguson, demonstrating how law enforcement was overwhelmed and scrambling to address the black mob violence. The police can be heard describing gun shots, even fired at police headquarters; multiple calls for help; burglaries in progress; and stores and police cars being set on fire.
At one point, police can be heard describing retreats from certain areas of Ferguson, citing “officer safety” issues. In other words, the mobs were more “militarized” than the police.
Film footage of the destruction and violence is bad enough. But what Flaherty has put together shows how the mobs were in charge of Ferguson and had more manpower and firepower than the police.
Flaherty wonders if all the talk about the alleged “militarization” of police led Missouri’s Democratic Governor Jay Nixon to deliberately let the looting and riots continue without an effective response or challenge. According to this theory, Nixon didn’t want the police or National Guard to look like they were overpowering the mob.
If so, the media bear some of the blame here, too. As we noted from the beginning of the Michael Brown case, our media had talked incessantly about the “militarized” police being the problem in Ferguson. But when the riots actually took place, the police were outgunned and outmanned.
It’s difficult to see how the media could have done a worse job of covering this anti-police violence.
If the past is any guide, the media will keep Ferguson smoldering while providing more face time for the agitators. Then they might move on to another case in which they can try to blame police for alleged misconduct.
Almost on cue, CNN is now focusing on a pending decision in an incident involving a large black man resisting arrest that the media have labeled the “chokehold death” case in New York City.
The issues they won’t address include the problem of black violence—specifically black-on-white violence—and drug use and family breakdown in the black community.